Page 93 of Hearts of Stone

It was like a sonic boom exploding inside me, reverberating outwards, and all I could do was withstand the aftershock. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do a damn thing as he turned me around to face him.

“Jade…” Adam stared down at me in concern, his hand rising, fingers flexing in the air, before he cupped my cheek. “What’s going on? I know those women are bitches, but—”

“Can’t…”

That’s all I could manage. My eyelids fluttered and whatever the hell was going on with my body came to a head. Pleasure, pure pleasure, rushed up, ready to burn me whole.

And I knew if I stayed there, I’d step gladly into its blaze.

Every nerve ending felt like it was being licked simultaneously. I wanted to go back for more.

But I couldn’t.

“I can’t do this…” I whispered, turning on my heel and walking away.

Chapter 51

Jade

“Jade?” Ignoring Adam’s shout, I lengthened my stride, making for where the building met the footpath. “Jade!”

But he would not be denied. He kept pace with me easily as I charged on, then he stepped in front of me as I turned onto the footpath. I had momentum up and couldn’t stop. When I realised I was going to collide with his chest, I threw my hands in front of my face. Next I knew, Adam had absorbed my impact by taking a half-step back into one of the alcoves that ran along the building and spinning me so that he was between me and the street. When I looked up at him, I had one hand on his lapel, with the other against the opening of his shirt. I could feel him: crisp cotton, finely woven wool, and man—warm, human, real. As skin touched skin, that intense feeling of sensual pleasure rushed through me, forcing me to start panting all over again. I needed to know what his reaction was so I took a step back, then froze when I looked up at him. Those full lips were parted, his brow was creased and he looked just as taken aback as I was by whatever was happening between us.

“I need to go,” I managed to get out.

“Then let me give you a lift.” He cleared his throat, then blinked, decorum returning. “You arrived with James, didn’t you?”

“You noticed that?” I asked.

“I notice quite a lot.” That rakish expression flashed over his face, but didn’t stay there. “It’s the only way to survivethat…” He stared in the direction of the ballroom, then he turned his head to me again and looked into my eyes, his expression intent. “But I think you’re asking something else entirely.”

Adam had been so careful about touching me without permission, so it was no surprise that when he raised his hand, he moved it slowly towards me. I had plenty of time to dodge out of the way if I wanted to. But I didn’t. I stood stock-still, my chest heaving as those long fingers trailed along my jaw, then down my neck, to come to rest on my mating mark.

The sensations that had flowed through my body when I’d touched the mark myself had ranged from heart-pumping to mildly orgasmic. But as Adam touched me there… I was back to gasping like a landed fish, unable to take a full breath. It was as though oxygen wasn’t able to exist alongside this kind of pleasure; that I’d had to choose one or the other and I’d gone for pleasure. It bubbled up within me, the pressure rising and rising until I was wobbling on my heels, barely able to stand, as my knees threatened to give out. I grabbed his wrist and snatched his hand away. Immediately, the throbbing feeling dialled down to a much more tolerable level, then stopped as I stepped free of him.

“OK, what the hell was that?”

“They haven’t told you yet?” he asked, a wild grin, a real one, spreading across his face. “It’s a primitive instinct that all witches and warlocks possess. Your gargoyles might know their fated mate on sight, but we…” His fingers moved towards me, almost of their own volition, then he snatched his hand back,balling it into a fist. “We know whether or not we’re a compatible match by touch.”

“How the hell can you base a relationship on… Ohh, you mean physical compatibility.” I wriggled my fingers. “You mean just touching tells us we’d be able to make beautiful babies or something.”

“Exactly that,” he said with a nod. “It was why those old… men of the Wildfyre Club were so disinterested in educating you on this world.”

“Because all I had to do was shake hands with a long line of warlocks and see who could nearly bring me to my knees with a no-hands orgasm and I’d know who to marry,” I muttered in disgust.

“No hands, huh?”

Gods, were all men such smug bastards any time they pleased a woman? I tried to scowl at him but his wide grin was infectious.

“So, are you telling me that touching me doesn’t affect you the same?” My eyebrow cocked up as I questioned him. “That this only works one-way, on me?”

His grin faded abruptly, replaced by something much more intense, something familiar. Because I’d seen the same look on Graven and Carrick’s faces when I’d thought they were a dream, and again on Seneca’s face when I let him inside my bedroom. I hadn’t had enough of men staring down at me like I was their entire world, so I soaked in Adam’s attention, too. But I’d asked a question and he partially answered it by grabbing my hand and pressing it against the neat fall of his pants.

“Quite the bloody opposite,” he ground out, closing my fingers around something long, thick and hard. “The night you entered the Whiteley Building was by far the most stimulating I’d ever spent within those walls.” He moved in closer, surrounding my body, just like my gargoyles did, and his breathhitched as I moved my hand up and down, mapping his entire length. “The second you stepped into the room with those gargoyles at your back, I went from being bored out of my mind, to hard and aching. While those old pricks blathered on and on, all I could think of was you.”

He pushed a strand of hair away from my neck, and my whole body quivered in response. I knew if he just shifted his fingers to the left an inch, I’d be left a gasping mess again. The fact we were in an alcove on a busy street didn’t seem to matter. Part of me felt greedy for that pleasure. Because all I could see in my head was long nights spent with my gargoyles, and then, during the day…

“And then you put every single one of those pricks in their place, and that was it. I was gone; done for. This isn’t what I thought would happen when I found the one for me. I’m not in the habit of pining for someone else’s fated mate, but you just had to be brave and beautiful and—”

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